Rainbow Warrior

Matauri-Bay - Camera

The original Rainbow Warrior began her first mission for Greenpeace in 1978. She sailed around the world to campaign against whaling, radioactive waste dumping at sea, expanding oil exploration and the reprocessing of nuclear waste. In 1980, during one of these missions, a French naval vessel rammed her when the Greenpeace crew demonstrated against the unloading of nuclear waste at the La Hague facility in France. In March 1985, the Rainbow Warrior put to sea from Florida to sail to Rongelap Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands, in the North Pacific. Rongelap’s 350 inhabitants had asked Greenpeace for help. Their homeland was highly contaminated with radioactivity, many people had been exposed and were sick, some had cancer and many infants were born with genetic defects. This was caused by the nuclear bomb testing carried out by the United States from 1946 to 1958 on the adjacent Bikini Atoll. But the American government had refused to give assistance to the inhabitants of neighbouring Rongelap. In May 1985, the Rainbow Warrior’s crew evacuated the inhabitants with their possessions to the island of Mejato. Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira documented this dramatic relocation.